


Big enough for the two of us

by hot666mail



Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Cats, Curses, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, F/F, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-18 12:03:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21710455
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hot666mail/pseuds/hot666mail
Summary: Erin moves into Holtz's apartment. Sort of.
Relationships: Erin Gilbert/Jillian Holtzmann
Comments: 7
Kudos: 28





	1. chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Study in Strays](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1397611) by [philalethia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/philalethia/pseuds/philalethia). 



> Um, ok, First off this is inspired by A Study in Strays by philalethia, which is way better than this hot garbage i just wrote, go read it instead.
> 
> Second, this is the first thing I've ever written like ever, and in a fandom I'm not that familiar with, so if there's anything I get outrageously wrong, lmk.
> 
> C, In this AU I sort of imagine everyone is younger that in the actual film, and Abby and Erin never had a falling out, just kept secretly working on spooky shit on the DL while Erin also pursued her tenure track dreams. So when she got fired for the video, she had been working at Columbia for a much shorter period of time and was less financially stable, hence her desperate need to save as much money as possible on housing. The location of the apartment is in the same spot as the real life cocktail bar Death and Company, which also has the advantage of a good commute to the Chinese restaurant and, later, the fire house, and is located in the east village, which made sense to me for Holtzmann to live in. I made it a coffee shop for the fic tho. 
> 
> Fourth, if anyone wants to beta this shit or point out any glaring errors in the comments, please do, i cant punctuate. or keep my tenses straight or any of that oops. UGH ok gonna post before i chicken out...

Erin was desperate to like the place. She had spent the last two weeks sleeping on a dingy couch and surrounded by the muffled clattering of dishware and the permeating scent of fried rice and seafood. Not to mention that she was the sort of workaholic that should absolutely not be allowed to live where she worked if she was to maintain any hope of ever achieving that fabled work-life balance. Still, as she looked around the under furnished East Village living space, Erin was plagued with the mounting suspicion that there was something Not Right about the situation.

“So, what do you think?” asked the kind-faced older woman in the doorway, with an expectant smile.

Erin thought the place was gorgeous. One bedroom, one bath, with ample closet space and well-placed windows. The kitchen was un-cramped and newly renovated. The parquet floors were mostly unscuffed. The water coming from the taps was a normal color, and there didn’t seem to be any leaks in the non-popcorned (thank god) ceiling. There were no obvious signs of pests or the telltale smell of mold. And yet, the woman now nervously awaiting a response to her question was offering the flat for an outrageously low monthly rent, and recent experiences had taught Erin to be deeply weary of underpriced New York City real estate. It was (as Abby and Patty’s most recent collaborative analysis evidenced) a statistically significant predictor of hauntings. And this place was located directly over a quiet, trendy coffee shop called, of all things, Death and Company. If this were a horror movie, that would have been the ultimate red flag.

“It’s wondeful, and completely in my price range,” Erin replied, and, aiming for flippant and failing by a mile, added somewhat gravely “…is it haunted?”

Erin wasn't exactly keen to give living with a ghost a second go.

“Erm, well, yes, a bit…”

“Are… wait, are you serious?”

“No, well, it’s got, sort of a cat.”

“A cat?”

“Yes. Oh! You’re not allergic are you, dear?”

“Um, no. No, I like cats…”

This was somehow even weirder that what Erin was expecting.

“It was left behind by a previous tenant,” the landlady went on to explain, “She was such a pleasant girl, and so clever! But a bit of a madwoman, always fiddling with things and running experiments. Never seemed like the sort to have a pet around the place, what with all the volatile machinery and that, but she disappeared one day and left behind a cat,” she finished with a shrug.

“Do I have to keep the cat?” Erin asked. It was far from a deal-breaker, but she wasn’t sure her odd work hours made her especially well-suited to pet ownership at the moment.

“Oh, if you can get rid of it, dear, be my guest. Provided you don’t harm the poor thing. It’s a bit of a terror. Scared away my last three tenants, and yet I’ve barely ever seen the creature. I’m not even really sure what sort of cat it is. Would you still like to see the lease?”

Despite her better judgement, Erin said yes, and signed. She was, after all, quite desperate to like the place. Besides, in the last month she’d stood up to a ghost, an asshole ex-boyfriend, and a condescending Columbia administrator. She could handle a cat, right?


	2. chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> destruction and bow ties

Wrong.

Erin wakes up the first night in her new home to a pale figure at the end of her bed, and for a fearful moment, she thinks she’s having another one of _those_ dreams. As her eyes adjust to the low light, she recognizes the figure for what it is: a cat. A shockingly ordinary looking cat, at that, for all the trouble it’s purported to have caused, though its stillness is a touch unnerving. It’s pale and slightly fluffy, with a grey face that reminds Erin a bit of a cartoon character that has just been in close proximity to an explosion, reflective pale blue eyes, and grey tipped ears that flatten against its skull as it lets out a hiss.

“I slept with a ghost in my room for a year, so it’s going to take more than that to scare me off,” Erin mumbles to the creature as she rolls over and goes back to sleep.

She awakes that morning to what can only be described as a deliberate and malicious attack on her wardrobe. The outfit she had lain out the night before has been systematically dismantled and strewn about the floor of her living room, and the cat is lying in the middle of it, lethargically batting at the tiny bow that used to be attached to the collar of one of her favorite shirts.

“fuck,” she curses, and the cat blinks up at her before swatting at the bow, sending it sliding in the general direction of her bare feet “I don’t have time for this,”

She steps over the wreckage of her tweed skirt suit and goes to take a long hot shower. At least the water pressure is good.

Erin emerges from her shower slightly more relaxed just in time to watch as the cat uses its head to nudge her coffee maker off the counter and onto the tiled floor, where the (thankfully empty) glass pot shatters rather spectacularly.

“FUCK! God _damnit_ what is _wrong_ with you?” Erin’s shouts devolve into unintelligible, bitter muttering, as she slips on the sneakers by her front door and moves closer to inspect the mess. The floor is covered with tiny glass shards so she takes off her bath towel and uses it to grab the cat, which goes surprisingly limp before starting to wriggle and hiss. “Alright, alright,” Erin coos at it “You’re an asshole but I still wouldn’t want you to get hurt,”

She plops the cat down on the couch, before putting on some underwear and going back to sweep up the mess. The cat shakes off the towel and pads over to watch her sweep from the entryway to the kitchen, looking unbearably smug about the entire situation.

“Of course, you realize” Erin threatens (only half in jest), brandishing a dustpan in the general direction of the cat, “this means war.”

The cat gives her an unimpressed look that Erin suspects might mean something along the lines of “Bring it on.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lmao oops switched tenses ;-p expect me to do more of that bullshit going forward bc I'm a mess bye


	3. chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> baked goods, gay grandmas, and supportive friends

If she hadn’t already seen the cat, and the copious amount of fur it left clinging to every textile surface in her new apartment, Erin might begin to suspect there _was_ ghost haunting the place. In the intervening week since the tweed suit incident, It had managed to wake her up at least once a night with its incessant atonal meowing (she’s had to buy earplugs just to get to sleep), claw away at three more of her favorite shirts (light blue silk, sheer white button up, and cream cotton with a mandarin collar), open the refrigerator door in the middle of the night (which was luckily mostly empty, Erin had been to busy to do any proper grocery shopping), and, impressively, dismantle her toaster (Honestly, what the fuck?).

The land lady, as a point of contrast, turned out to be genuinely lovely. Her name was Kay, and she ran the café on the ground floor, Death and Company Coffee, with her partner, a short Colombian woman named Beatrice, and had patiently listened to Erin’s fresh flood of perplexed complaints every morning over a free cup of coffee and a pastry, before shooing her off to work with a baggie of baked goods for later. Between her new, much less predictable, but more emotionally fulfilling work situation, and the two grandmother figures feeding her fresh treats every morning, Erin felt more a part of a family than she ever had in her strict, oppressive childhood home, or in the stifling, straight laced academic halls of Columbia. And she was determined to make it work.

Abby and Patty, who had thus far been the beneficiaries of Erin’s Death and Co. goody bags, were also determined that she should make it work. The first morning she had come in distraught over the loss of her favorite outfit, and her friends had been as supportive as she could have hoped. That is to say, Patty had questioned whether or not the cat had ultimately done her a favor because Erin was “way too young to be wearing tweed on purpose,” and Abby had gone with the much more diplomatic, “sorry about your clothes, babe, but you’ve gotta admit this yucca bread is super worth it.”

Erin told them to keep it up and see if she kept sharing her snacks. It had been an empty threat, but sufficient shut them both up. Which may have ultimately been a mistake on her part. her inbox was now a collection of forwarded articles on how to tame a neurotic cat. Worse, she had started reading them.

After that first morning, the cat all but vanished. It was still somewhere in the building presumably, but had found itself some hiding spot Erin hadn’t been able to locate yet. Her apartment was minimally furnished, and aside from the closet and cupboards, there wasn’t really anywhere a cat of that size could hide, yet it somehow managed to elude her, emerging only at night to cause a ruckus and invent new ways of destroying Erin’s various earthly possessions. And to watch her sleep, apparently. The last she knew because no matter how many times she changed her sheets, she always woke up to a dusting of fur on the end of her comforter.

Her initial antipathy towards the beast had given way to a mix of amusement and concern. She had moved into its home, after all, and she was no stranger to anxiety herself. She could understand that it was probably afraid, especially if (as many of the articles mentioned) it had suffered some sort of trauma, either from its owner’s sudden departure or from the perhaps unstable living environment it seemed, from Kay’s stories, the eccentric former tenant had provided. And besides, it was clearly smart, which Erin had to find endearing. That bit with the toaster was practically genius. The average human probably couldn’t dismantle a piece of machinery so thoroughly.

Erin was determined to coax it out, and she had done her research, so she started where she usually did: with a well-organized list.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If your friends aren't assholes, are they really your friends? I, an asshole, say no. (Obviously, they're supportive as heck when push comes to shove)
> 
> Kay is based on my next door neighbor growing up, so I stole her name for this. She had a soft spot for all the stray cats, was always putting out food and taking them to the vet and putting up those signs that said stuff like "drive like your kids live here, drive like your pets live her" and once stepped in front of a car that looked like it was gonna speed through the stop sign in front of her house just so she could bang on the hood and give the guy a piece of her mind.
> 
> Beatrice is based on my mom, who is not a lesbian and is bad at cooking and is also not Colombian. So mostly they're very different. She is Venezuelan, though, and very short. 
> 
> How to Live with a Neurotic Cat is a book by Stephen Baker that I had as a kid, and thought was very funny.


	4. chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> basically, errands

On her way home that same evening, Erin stopped by the pet store and picked up a variety of tinned wet cat foods, a few bags of treats, a catnip mouse, and one of those string-feather toys, thinking vaguely that she might somehow be able to lure the cat out of hiding with the thing, before remembering that she still had no idea where the creature was hiding in the first place.

Come to think of it, Erin had also never caught even the slightest whiff of cat piss in the flat, and after a couple weeks hunting for a cheap rental before lucking out on her current apartment, she was overly familiar with the acrid stench of uncleaned litterbox. It could make her eyes water from a different room. So, the cat had to be going somewhere, and that somewhere had to be far enough away that any bodily unpleasantries were unobtrusive. _I’ll skip the litterbox for now, and check again for openings it might be going out through when I get home_ , she though, _though I’m pretty sure I would have noticed any significant holes in the wall._

She paused for a moment in front of the display of cat trees and tiered scratching posts, with affixed cubby holes and dangling toys, but ultimately settled on a basic scratch pad, which would be much easier to haul back to her apartment.

She also stopped by the hardware store and bought a set of basic childproof cabinet locks, a flashlight, and some high-efficiency lightbulbs, which she’d been meaning to buy anyways.

She had placed an online order for Thai food from her phone when she left the pet store, so the deliveryman was just arriving when she stepped up to unlock the front door. After paying him (cash, with a 20 percent tip, rounded up because who has time for coins in this day and age), Erin hauled her various bags up to the apartment and dumped them unceremoniously onto the counter, switched on the kitchen radio, and got to work.

Knelt down on the kitchen floor, she fitted each cabinet with a safety latch between bites of green curry and rice. When she was done, she stored her leftovers in the otherwise empty fridge.

Locating a couple saucers that supposedly went with her plain teacups, but which she had never once used, Erin cracked open one of the tins of cat food (it said chicken on the label and smelled foul), scooped it out onto one, and placed it on the floor. She filled the other with as much fresh water as it could hold and set it down a few feet away.

After inspecting the back of the cabinets for any points of egress, shining the flashlight into every corner, she stored the rest of the cat food and treats in the cabinets, along with the lightbulbs, which she resolved to install later and definitely not forget about. 

She left the scratchpad on the floor by the couch, propped up the feather toy against the arm, where she could reach it if the cat showed up, and placed the mouse strategically in front of the coffee table, where her view of it was unobstructed by her laptop, before pouring herself a glass of wine and curling up under her favorite fleece throw blanket. She selected a documentary on Netflix and turned the volume down so low that she ended up having to read the subtitles. She waited.

She woke up three episodes of Ken Burns’ Prohibition later. The mouse hadn’t moved an inch, but both pairs of high heeled shoes that were left in the rack by the door had had their heels snapped clean off, and every single cabinet door had been left defiantly open. Erin poured her wine out into the sink and went to bed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry this is boring. I was always inordinately fond of the part in The Girl Who Played With Fire where Lisbeth goes shopping at Ikea. does it show?
> 
> Reading about people getting things done makes me feel like getting things done. Now I almost want to clean my apartment.
> 
> Also, someday, I will learn how to spell apartment on the first try. Am I insane, or does it really look like it should have two 'p's in there?
> 
> Eating takeout on the floor is a pretty un-Eriny thing to do, but she's a woman on a (very low-stakes) mission, and is also maybe a bit less fastidious in this universe
> 
> Ken Burns' prohibition is one of my favorite documentaries, and I have forced all both of my friends to watch it with me.
> 
> I swear something will happen next time, thanks for reading this anyways.


	5. chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> nightmares and laser pointers

The room was cold: a thieving cold robbing her limbs of not just warmth, but feeling. Her breath curled over her head, visible in the chill air and eerily illuminated by the faint light at the end of her bed. She couldn’t lift her head, but she knew what she would see if she did. She wanted to scream, but she didn’t have enough air left, couldn’t gasp for breath, could only lie and watch it leave her in one long slow exhalation, until she was sure there was not a bit of air left in her lungs, but still something kept sleeping out of her open mouth, floating listlessly towards the ceiling. Her core felt like it was imploding, like a black hole pulling the rest of her slowly in. Suddenly, there was a warm pressure on her chest, grounding her. “That’s not how this usually goes” she thought, and the realization alone was enough alert her that she was dreaming and startle her awake.

She shot up, gasping for air, and tilting the cat from where it was perched on her chest with a startled meow. “S- sorry” she said between desperate breaths “come back,” Erin patted the spot on the bed next to her thigh. The cat approached cautiously, so Erin stretched out her hand for it to sniff. The animal butted its face against her palm, which Erin took as a sign of approval, and sunk her hands into its plush fur. “Thanks for waking me up,” she whispered to it as she reclined against her pillows. The cat curled up against her side and began to purr, stopping only to nudge at her when her hand stopped moving. Eventually, Erin’s residual anxiety gave way to exhaustion, and she drifted off to sleep.

After that, they got along. And, while its personality improved on acquaintance, the animal’s behavior did not become any less odd.

It steadfastly refused to eat any of the wet food Erin had bought, and wouldn’t even deign to sniff at the cat treats. It would lick up bread crumbs, however, and once stuck its head into a Chirashi bowl Erin had picked up for dinner at Sunrise, effectively claiming it. Erin had taken to feeding it slices of raw tuna and salmon from the same grocery store (sashimi grade, the utter snob).

The mouse and feather toy were of no interest at all, apparently, but the cat did like to watch Erin scratch out equations. When she brought home work, it would lie and watch patiently for hours, until it got bored and began to swat at the pencil in Erin’s hand. Once it came to that, she had learned from experience that it was pointless to try and get anything more done that night.

It did like to play with laser pointers, but ignored the glowing red dot, instead making a game of batting the device out of Erin’s hand. Task accomplished, it would carry off its prize and hide it somewhere. Erin had lost three laser pointers so far and was thinking of putting in a bulk order on Amazon.

The cat was still an agent of destruction, but, thankfully, had ceased destroying kitchen appliances and assorted apparel. Mostly, it just made a mess. Erin would come home from work now to the papers she had left stacked neatly on the coffee table fanned out over its surface, and books pulled off the highest, most unreachable shelves and strewn about the floor of her living space.

Most of the books weren’t even hers in the first place: they had come with the apartment, along with the shelf itself, and pointed towards the previous tenant’s interests. Interests which, it just so happened, overlapped significantly with Erin’s own. There were a number of physics and engineering texts, with copious notes in the margins and a few surprisingly skilled doodled, as well as several books on more occult subject matter. Amusingly, there were two separate books titled Random Vibrations, one of which explained the mathematics used to calculate the effects of random vibrations on structures, while the other was a rambling exploration of spiritual energies and their supposed worldly impact. 

Erin was increasingly curious about the original owner (who was apparently named Holtzmann) of the cat (who remained officially nameless, despite Abby’s insistence on calling it Catsper). Kay and Beatrice’s stories, and her bizarre collection of reading materials all pointed to an individual who could be, to put it mildly, unpredictable. But she had also been close to the landladies, and had left without warning or any of her possessions. If something had happened to her, Erin thought that someone ought to find out what, and if something hadn’t, Erin though someone should find her anyways and tell her off for leaving behind her pet. It was deeply irresponsible.

The rest of the abandoned furniture was still stacked in the basement storage area by the laundry room. Erin had asked Kay if she could see it once, and the woman had led her to an odd collection of spare mechanical parts and half built contraptions, several stacked boxes clothing (labeled Holtz in Beatrice’s handwriting), an impressive variety of CDs and sticker covered boombox, a poorly upholstered rolling leather desk chair, the first four seasons of the X-files on VHS, and a metal cabinet with a number of dangerous chemicals (which Erin volunteered to dispose of before the fire department found out). Amongst all the clutter there was not a single item that so much as hinted towards pet ownership.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I live, breathe, and die for Sunrise Mart. If it were open 24 hours it would be my favorite grocery store of all time.
> 
> Random Vibration of Structures is an actual book by C. Y. Yang which I stole from my dad and am not smart enough to read properly.
> 
> Holtz is def for sure reading those books she knocks down, and actually following the calculations Erin is doing. 
> 
> She is also out here making sure after a while Erin puts the work away and rests. 
> 
> I think Ghost Girl and Catsper sounds like a cute animated TV show that I would watch. 
> 
> Catch me making typos left and right. no seriously, catch me, like point them out, I'm hopeless.


	6. chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *record scratch* you might be wondering how I got myself into this situation
> 
> TW for v minor blood

Holtzmann wasn’t exactly great at relationships. Well, she’d never good at being _in_ a relationship, and was proving to be pretty fucking bad at ending them. She new how to spark things, though. Lighting things on fire was pretty much her specialty. And she liked to flirt. She reveled in that brief period in a new relationship where her strangeness was seen as captivating instead of a character flaw. She knew it never lasted, and so she kept her romantic entanglements short and casual. Everyone on the same page, no broken hearts, no messy fallout. This last one was an outlier, and perhaps, she was beginning to realize, a mistake.

It _had_ been short, she’d met Irene only three weeks ago at a dimly lit cocktail bar with plush velvet seats and an overpriced menu. She’d known the woman would be there. Every part of it had been deliberate, and, God, didn’t that just make it all so much worse?

Their affair had been anything but casual. Holtzmann maybe should have clarified, expressed her lack of interest in anything exclusive or long term. Irene was clearly taken with her, and it was unfair to lead her on. It would have been the ethical thing to do. And yet, Holtzmann had wanted to get close, wanted the other woman to let her in. She had acted selfishly, ruthlessly exploited the woman’s feelings for her, known it was wrong even as she’d done it. Which only made it all the more awful when it all came to light.

“Is this what you were here for then?” Irene had asked when she’d gotten out of bed and found Holtzmann pouring over her papers in the grey early morning.

Holtzmann hadn’t known how to respond to that, didn’t know how to tell the truth without hating herself. She’d apologized quietly and moved to leave without once looking Irene in the eye, when the woman had reached out and grabbed her by the arm, halting her.

“You don’t just get to leave like that! God I can’t believe you- you know, if I’d just wanted a good fuck, I could have bought myself a fancy vibrator. And if I wanted conditional affection, I would have gotten a fucking cat,” Irene, who had sounded the whole time on the verge of tears, let out a sudden, jarring laugh, “I bet you would have made a decent cat,”

Holtzmann hated hated hated emotional confrontation, wanted very much to leave, but felt rooted to the floor, like the soles of her feet were drawn to that exact spot by a very strong magnet. Irene had not let go of her, was, in fact, digging her nails into Holtzmann’s skin to the point of drawing blood. She could see it beading up from where Irene was pressing into her. Four crescents on her pale forearm, gently oozing. It hurt, but she couldn’t make herself do anything about it. Holtzmann, who was almost never still, felt absolutely paralyzed. A drop of blood trailed over the curve of her arm and dripped onto the polished wood floor. A neat scarlet punctuation mark to their relationship.

Satisfied with this, Irene let her go, and Holzmann went home without another word.

Upon arriving, Holtzmann gone immediately to the bathroom to wash her wound (even visibly clean nails, she knew, were probably bacteria riddled, and she didn’t want to risk infection), but when she’d looked down at her forearm, there hadn’t been any trace of the cuts she had borne just minutes earlier. Confused and exhausted by the whole ordeal, she’d gone to bed.

When she woke up, she was a cat. Great. She supposed she was lucky Irene hadn’t seen fit to turn her into a fancy vibrator instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I haven't exactly worked out the finer points of exactly what info Irene had that Holtz wanted, but its something about spectral/psychokinetic energy and how it works/affects people in a broader sense than just hauntings, i think. Like, it's probably somehow also a factor in curses, and, therefore, what happened to Holtz? I don't know, just pretend it makes sense, I'm not inventive enough for this shit. 
> 
> This plot is based on a Sherlock fic, and Irene is already a lesbian, so I just kept the her as the responsible party for the whole cat-ening.


	7. chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> another v quick look into Holtz's perspective

Looking down at her own small, furry body, Holtzmann wondered for the thousandth time what she could have done differently.

“I’m really only interested in perhaps a no-strings, friends-with-benefits deal, and access to the collated stacks of seriously classified government research and insanely rare occult books you keep casually strewn across various surfaces of your apartment like issues of Golf Digest in a dentist’s office waiting room.”

No, that never would have worked. She’d never have gotten the slightest glimpse into the woman’s apartment, and Irene might still have turned her into a toad or something just for having the sheer gall to talk to her that way.

Irene was unpredictable. Holtz liked that about her, was convinced the two of them could even have been pretty good friends if things hadn’t gone so pear shaped.

Which wasn’t completely her fault, though, was it? Because, really, who said ‘I love you’ after two weeks!? Holtzmann was a certified, card carrying lesbian and she still thought that was moving fast. No, that part was not her fault, she had no way of anticipating that things would get serious so quickly for Irene. When the whole thing started, she’d thought she’d be wounding her pride, maybe, but not breaking her heart. Which, obviously, she did feel badly about, and not just because it had come around to bite her in the ass so spectacularly.

Her spiraling thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the shower shutting off. She hopped up onto the counter and got into position. _Showtime_

The new tenant’s face went very pale and then very pink as she began to shout, and Holtz was so distracted by it that she hardly noticed the woman’s approach until she was already swaddled in a (yuck) damp bath towel and swooped off to the living room.

She struggled and hissed until the woman put her down on the couch before disappearing off to her room. She was being surprisingly considerate. The second tenant after Holtz’s disappearance had tried to kick her, and after that she’d made a point of making herself scarce, but she knew her sabotage was more effective when she put on a show. The first time, at least. So that they knew who they were dealing with.

Holtzmann watched with amusement (and a touch of interest that made her feel totally lecherous, but still she didn’t look away) as the woman swept up the remnants of her shattered coffee pot. She’d been caught off guard exiting the shower and was now clad only in a pair of cotton briefs and a plain white bra. Holtz had expected something a bit frillier, considering the clothes she seemed to favor (maybe more tiny bows somewhere?), but her choice was disappointingly practical.

Holtz wondered, as the woman jabbed at her general direction from several feet away with the dustpan she was holding, how long it would take to scare this one off.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IK these chapters are all crazy short sorry :-|


End file.
